Pennsylvania Hell HouseSubmitted by anonymous
In 2002 I had come into some money, just enough to buy some land and build a home. After searching for months, one came up in rural Pennsylvania. Along a lonely two lane highway with no visible neighbors, it was well under-priced, 42 acres with a pond, with a burnt out house foundation, an old springhouse / shed next to it, and a burnt out barn foundation. After making inquiries, I was told by the owners that they started a business out of state and were very desperate to move. A likely story.

The former owners cashed my laughably small check and basically went missing, referring me to a local attorney to finish paperwork. Family and friends helped me demolish a modified house trailer over the old foundation. To save money, I used the old foundation to have my little house built.

Building was a frustrating process. Virtually everyone working on the site was injured to varying degrees, the worst an experienced carpenter that fell from a ladder and had broken his knee. At the same time, I had had a small barn built over the old barn’s foundation. On that site, equipment was constantly breaking down. We pressed on, finishing the building in double the estimated time.

On the evening of November 11, 2003, I was finally moving my things into my new home. On the third trip back, I found the house pitch black and smelling of smoke. Not having phone service yet, I tried to ring the fire department to find my mobile would not work. I drove as fast as I could into the tiny town five minutes away, and borrowed the phone at a club. The fire department came and heat tested the walls to thankfully find no flames behind them. The remote control ceiling fans in the two-story living room had scorch marks two feet in diameter around their bases. Everything was blown out, the TV, fridge, laundry, furnace, air conditioner, absolutely everything destroyed.

The firemen outside, inspecting with flashlights, found the problem. The neutral line had been pulled out of the main cables leading to the pole. The problem with that was the fact that the line was forty feet in the air, with a fenced in dog yard below, where no one could have possibly touched it. The electrics inspector had checked it twice before power was turned on.

It took more than a month to get everything back in order, luckily I am one of those people that buys extra warranties and insurance! The electric company swore that it was impossible for that line to come loose, but they did repair it and pay for a few items in the end.

New Year’s came and went, and I began noticing strange things. Being single at the time, I didn’t mind living alone, as I had lived in the remote Northwest Pennsylvania wilderness by myself and actually quite enjoyed it. This time around it was different.

I was feeling anxious, losing sleep, and generally feeling, as odd as it sounds, like someone was living with me and I was drinking way too much coffee. The behavior of my animals changed as well. My two dogs, who usually stuck to me like glue, preferred to stay outside no matter what the weather. They would come in for food then tear back out the dog flap as though their tails were on fire. They started barking and howling at nothing I could see, but I just assumed it was the local wildlife winding them up. I had a couple of retired horses and a miniature donkey that started acting strange as well. The donkey was always virtually silent, but he had began braying several times a day. The horses were becoming fearful and difficult to handle, very unusual for them. I assumed that at their age, they were having trouble adjusting to new surroundings. My two parrots, that I had a giant two story cage custom built for, had been part of our family for years and acted as such. They had stopped talking and playing, preferring to hide at the top of the cage instead of clamoring for attention.

That winter was very difficult. The gas furnace had a safety shut-off part that had to be replaced to turn the furnace back on. Several times in the dead of night, I would hear it break. Thankfully, I had a very understanding repairman that would drive through the snow at night to repair it. During the blowout, I had a small fireplace that I would use to keep me and my pets warm. Occasionally the flames would roar up the chimney as though a blast of wind came through, but there wasn’t one. Eventually, I had the furnace replaced with a different brand, only to have problems with that as well.

As the months wore on, the feelings got worse. I was constantly clearing my throat and had developed a habit of picking at my cuticles. I was having horrific nightmares, terrible stuff that my brain couldn’t have possibly generated. I would wake up, sometimes screaming or crying, and would feel a very deep depression and sadness that would last half the day. I would come home from work to find different electrical things on, lamps, TV, coffee maker, all sorts of things. Once I came in to find the guest room bathtub faucets open full blast. I chalked it up to me just being exhausted, but others had started to feel the effects as well.

Some of my friends that stayed over in the guest room, usually as a weekend country getaway, would ask if I was up the night before because they heard things. A few had the bad nightmares I did, but I kept quiet. A good friend had an 18 month old son, the happiest baby I’ve ever met. When she brought him along for a visit, the little guy who was always getting into things refused to leave his mother’s lap. Also during this time, I had a security system that had a door open notifier That would “ding-ding!” when any door was opened (similar to those used in convenience stores). It had started ding-ding-ing all the time when no one was around or near the doors. The security company inspected the whole system and found nothing, but replaced some parts to no effect, it still sounded off at all hours.

I really became worried when one summer night I felt something poke me in the back, even though I was alone. A week or two after, I was terrified one morning to open the blinds in my upstairs bedroom, the same wall that the power came into, to find a greasy ear print on the outside of the glass, forty feet in the air, on a sheer wall. I was so scared I was physically sick. I took a photo with a disposable camera; when I got them the print was black. All the other photos were fine, and it was a bright morning when I took the shot. That was about the time that I let myself believe something was going on, but I didn’t say anything.

I had starting visiting a friendly local bar, and was getting to know the community. When they heard that I had bought the old farm, they would give me a funny look and change the subject. When I finally asked my new friend “Fred” (not his real name) why they did that, he took me to a back room to talk and gave me some shocking news.

Fred’s father, who had since passed on, was a lifelong local firefighter. The short version of the story was that both the barn and house had burnt down twice, and there were bodies discovered, but back then they didn’t have the forensics or resources to identify them. Sadly, not many people cared about or got involved with the “boom-docks”. Next he told me that his family were friendly with the first owners, before the ones I had bought the place from, and that farming family was touched by tragedy many times. The final blow came when he informed me that the wife of the couple that I had bought it from was on husband number four, two committing suicide (suspiciously) and one that had just disappeared. Neither she nor her husband informed me of any of that.

In January 2005, the company I was working for had been struggling for some time. They were forced to close down, taken out by the corporate big boys, and I was out of a job. The local economy was not in good shape, and I didn’t fancy the idea of being on unemployment, stuck in a house I had come to fear all day long. I decided to go finish my college education. I had enough savings just to squeak by, and with financial aid I went back to college.

I spent as much time on campus as I could, but I did have animals to care for, so I had to spend time with them. My pets were virtually strangers to me. My elderly horse, who like the others went in and out of the barn as they pleased, developed a pacing habit. He usually spent most of his life dozing, but he would pace the outside of the barn sometimes for an hour straight. I tried everything I could to help them, but I worried about how all of this would end up. I had started dating someone, and when he came near the animals they would shy away, as they had started doing with everyone. That relationship ended with petty arguments and heated emotions, something that is not in my usually happy, easy going personality.

Again alone, I would be home studying when I would feel something that I still shudder at. I could feel a sense of the face of a very evil person about an inch from the side of my face. I would go outside to shake it off, and it would stop, but a few days later it would be back. There were all the symptoms of a haunting that one sees on TV. Phones ringing with no one there, cold wind with no source, ghastly stenches also without a source, the lot. I confided in my grandmother in confidence who suggested I go see someone about stress, and I did. After the first therapy session, I returned the next week to find the doctor trying to push sleeping pills on me. I didn’t like the prospect of being in that house under the influence of a sleeping pill, especially with those nightmares, so I quit going.

I was having little accidents in the house. I was riding my one year old exercise bike and the pedal snapped. I got a nasty shock from my curling iron. I was burnt by a pot handle on the stove that had been sitting there with the stove off for at least twenty minutes. I wasn’t feeling well. I was rarely sick in the past, but I started getting migraines and heartburn. I have always been thin, but my weight dropped to 93 pounds. I was absolutely exhausted, but I didn’t have time to rest because a new problem started. I have always kept a clean home, especially to keep my pets healthy, but dust would appear in hours. I kept my furnace / air conditioner filters clean, but no result. I had the repairman check the entire system to find nothing amiss. Dust everywhere, all the time. I would come home from school and there it was again. This lasted for about six weeks then stopped as quickly as it started.

In late summer 2005, my dear old friend “Dave” (not his real name) split up with his partner of five years and came to stay with me. He was a tax preparer, and worked from home. He set up shop at my place, and I was thrilled to have someone in the house. For about a week, things were relatively quiet, but it didn’t last. I heard Dave open the guest room door and say “What?”. He then yelled upstairs to ask what I wanted. I told him I didn’t come downstairs. He went back to sleep, I sat awake devastated that the peace and quiet was gone.

The next morning, I sat Dave down and told him what was happening. He was skeptical but listened to what I had to say. As the weeks went on, the knocking on his door continued, even though he slept with it open. One night, he came into my room screaming “What! What! What the **** do you want? God****it, what do you want” and grabbed a pillow and hit me as hard as he could with it. This was not a normal Dave. He never swore, preferring “freak”, “heck”, and “darn” -type words. He wouldn’t hurt a fly, literally. He would shoo them through the door or catch them in a cup and release them outside. I shook him and sat him down and he had begun to cry. He said something keeps knocking on his door, and after that he slept on the sofa for a week.

Dave started experiencing the same things I did when he was alone in the house. The phone ringing, the “ding-ding” of the door notifier, feeling sad and anxious, the dogs not wanting to come in to eat, et c.. Dave was always proud of his mega-healthy, organic, exercise every day lifestyle. He began to drink, even though before that he referred to alcohol as a poisonous liver killer. He decided that he would like some pet chickens. We bought a dozen and settled them in. I had owned chickens before, and knew that I had to keep them in the stall for a week or two so they wouldn’t wander off when they were let out during the day. When we did let them out one Sunday morning, they scattered screaming in all directions. Six were found at the neighbor’s farm two miles down the road, where I told the farmer he could keep them. The other six were never seen again, probably eaten by wildlife.

One evening, we were having some wine on the side porch next to the old springhouse / shed. The springhouse was underneath the shed, with steps leading down to it without a door. We were having a whining session about ex-boyfriends when there was a sudden bright flash, as though someone was welding. Dave saw it directly, I saw it reflected in the sliding glass door. There was no power to that building, and we ran in the house and locked the doors. We stayed up that night, saying very little to each other.

About this time, one of the most annoying things of the whole ordeal showed up, flies. Houseflies, in every room, I was swatting up to ten a day, and I would hear Dave swearing as they landed on him at night, waking him up out of what little sleep he got. He got over his aversion to killing things pretty quickly, and one of us would never see the other without a fly swatter in our hands. We both kept the house spotless, and what straw manure from the barn that wasn’t taken to the garden center I stored way at the back of the farm. I kept the barn in show condition, and it had less flies in it than the house. We checked all the screens and the dog flap, there were no openings. We started blaming each other, arguing about who brought what into the house.

Soon after the flash in the springhouse. I was leaving class and turned my mobile on. Dave had left several messages, and I rang him back directly. He said he was parked on campus and for me to meet him. When he got out of his car he was sickly white and pulled up his sleeve. There was a bruise on his arm, and then showed me bruises on his leg and ribs. He said that he was in the downstairs toilet having a pee when something shoved him from behind hard enough to knock him over into the toilet tank and sink. He flatly said that we were going home and packing his things, and asked me to do the same. We argued in the house as he was packing. He begged me to leave with him, but I couldn’t. Where was I supposed to go with dogs, horses, and parrots?

Communication broke down between us after he left. Phone calls would dissolve into an argument about my safety. The last time he contacted me, he was living with his mother.

The winter of 2005 / 2006 was horrible. Along with everything going on, my parrots had begun to scream this unholy, ear splitting noise in the middle of the night. It got so bad that I found an avian spe*******t. He was absolutely at a loss, telling me that birds are instinctively quiet in the dark. We tried several methods to get them to stop, to no avail. Soon afterwards they had also began flying into the cage bars, one eventually injuring himself. I found a sanctuary to send them to, and with a lot of tears I left them there. From what I am told they have recovered.

One evening, I went to see a holiday show on campus along with some older students. We made plans to go out for drinks after. Since I don’t drink & drive, two of them that shared an apartment offered to put me up for the night. Since it was very cold and windy, I brought the dogs in and slid the aluminum locking panel on top of the dog flap. When I came home the next morning, I found my front door ripped to shreds. The glass panel was virtually opaque with scratches at the bottom, and the wooden frame was gone. The pet door panel and step below was all scratched as well. They had never done anything like that before. They were so reluctant to come in the house that I built two large heated boxes outside for them. They refused to stay in the house for more than ten minutes.

By the middle of 2006 this thing was running my life. I cut my classes down to part-time. I got a part time job at a campus book store, but again I had to go home to care for my animals. I would waffle between numbness and rage. When I was numb, I would ignore all the things happening around me, turning off the TV that came on itself, hanging up the phone with no one there, staying up at night with the presence around me and just staring or reading. When I felt rage I would scream and swear as loud as I could at the thing, throwing things and getting into a right state.

In August 2006, I took the opportunity to join a study abroad program at college. I had arranged for a couple I had known for years to stay and look after my animals. Two weeks later, my parents phoned to tell me that the couple had left, leaving an excuse of an ill relative. My gracious parents saved the day, tending to the animals twice a day, so I could complete the program. I never bothered to contact the couple after that, not only angry that they left me high and dry, but also I didn’t want to know what experiences, if any, that they had. They made no effort to contact me either.

My experience abroad was amazing. I found out later that I was staying in an ancient building that was on the site of an abbey where monks had lived. The second I dragged my bags into my room I got that “warm fuzzy” feeling that I hadn’t felt in years. We had a few days to settle in, and the first day I fell asleep around seven p.m. and didn’t get up until noon, something I never do. For a short time, I was really, completely home. I met a wonderful man and we fell in love quickly. I felt confident enough to tell him my experiences. In his culture, the supernatural is more accepted than in the States, and not only did he believe me but he encouraged me to work through my traumas.

I returned to America and immediately set things in motion. I found good homes for my animals, sold what household goods that I could, and found a trustworthy real estate agent that would sell my place without direct contact between me and potential buyers. I sold the place for next to nothing, and I didn’t care. I am now happily living abroad, sharing my guy’s business and having a great life. I do miss my family and friends, but I do talk and email to them daily and come back to visit when time allows.

This is my story. This is what happened. There are many more incidents at this place, but I feel that there is enough here to explain what I have gone through. Thank you for listening. I hope that if there is anyone unfortunate enough to go through what I have that this story will help them as well.

Copyright notice
- All photographs, ghost stories and site articles featured on Ghost Mysteries
belong to the individual(s) who have submitted
them to the site and should not be reproduced,
copied or featured elsewhere without prior
permission from the copyright holder.